The motives and barriers of association conference attendance: evidence from an Australasian tourism and hospitality academic conference

Abstract

This paper reports on the motives and barriers to association conference attendance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that academics are facing increasingly constrained budgets for conference attendance. This paper seeks to confirm if this is indeed the case in reference to data drawn from an Australasian academic tourism and hospitality conference. The paper contributes to the growing body of literature on conference attendance motivations and supplements the lesser body of work on conference attendance barriers. The findings suggest that the delegates sampled were indeed receiving less support to attend conferences and this variously affected the prominence given to some motives and barriers for association conference attendance, with the motives more salient than the barriers in determining attendance. The paper concludes in proposing a research agenda aimed at ensuring the personal and professional benefits of attending academic association conferences continue into the foreseeable future.